Gaudos

Abstract

Gaudos was originally and still is the name of a very small island south-west of Crete. It was itself confused with Calypso’s Island of Ogygia when at the very beginning it was called “Ogylia”. This island was subsequently named as “Caudus” or “Caudi”, as well as “Claudus”, “Clauda” and even Claudia”, commonly called also “Gozo” by the sixteenth century. The confusion of Gaudos near Crete with Gaulos near Malta, south of Sicily, arose from Strabo in the first century A.D., together with the confusion of our Melite with another Melite in the Adriatic Sea. The result of all this is that the classical name of our Gozo remains Gaulos, while its present names of Għawdex and Gozo are derived from Gaudos of Crete. In Classical literature the name of Gaudos is referred to a small island on the south-western side of Crete. The editor of Stadiasmus adds that the present name of the island of Gaudos near Crete is Gaudapula, though a modern atlas still refers to the island of Gavdhos. It is half the size of our island of Gozo, roughly at 24˚ longitude and 35˚ latitude (1˚ southern than our Gozo), and less than 30 miles from Crete.